The cynical yet always insightful and often hilarious political/financial commentaries that once characterized the Insightful Pontificator can now be found at Mighty Quinn on Politics and Money. The Pontificator remains the reflective, often humorous, and always thought provoking repository of my musings on a multitude of other topics. Faith will be a major topic; believe (it) or not, faith provides plenty of grist for the piquant commentary Pontificator readers have come to expect.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

“I WISH YOU COULD HAVE COME UP WITH A MORE BELIEVABLE STORY; I FELT DISTINCTLY LIKE AN IDIOT REPEATING IT.”

4/14/12

Following up on yesterday’s post, “MR. PRESIDENT, WE CANNOT ALLOW A MINE SHAFT GAP!”, the War Party and its media organs apparently have neither a sense of shame nor time to reflect on, or edit, their arguments. On page A10 of this weekend’s (i.e. 4/14/12-4/15/12’s) Wall Street Journal, only three pages from a story headlined (page A7) “Pyongyang Admits Rocket Failure,” direly warns, in the continuation, headlined “Military Weighs Iranian Threat” of a page A1 article,

Beyond the waters of the Persian Gulf, military planners worry about Iran’s expanding arsenal of ballistic missiles, built with North Korean cooperation and know-how.” (Emphasis mine)

Iranian intentions are not in question here; both sides of the mullahs vs. Ahmadinejad rift have been perfectly forthright about their desire to destroy our ally Israel (though perhaps Mr. Ahmadinejad has been even more strident in this desire) and only slightly less emphatic in their willingness to wreak havoc among their Sunni Arab neighbors. But before we get all gung-ho about going to war with Iran (Note the GOP debates on this subject, lampooned perfectly, and hilariously, by Peggy Noonan in the same edition of the Journal (page A15).), perhaps we ought to soberly assess the actual capabilities of the Iranians. To the War Party, of course, sober reflection is a sure sign of weakness and treason. But I digress.

And it gets worse. In the aforementioned page A7 article on North Korea’s latest in a series of epic failures in its rocket program, the Journal states the patently ridiculous

Huh? The effective explosion of the “weather satellite” bearing rocket a few minutes after its launch has not even slowed the nuclear program of Asian version of the Keystone Kops? Of course not, in the view of those who desperately need to keep the “Korean threat” alive. As the War Party’s most vocal media arm explains, Pentagon spokesman George Little says

“Their (i.e., North Korea’s) recent track record is not good. (Gee, Mr. Little, do you really think so? MQ) This is, in our estimation, their third attempt. We’re not ready to say that somehow the brakes are on North Korean military advancements.”

There is none so blind, one supposes, as he who will not see.

But the news is not all bad; some outside the War Party are noting that the failure of this latest missile launch has indeed thrown a monkey wrench into the North Korean nuclear program, and indeed into the workings of the entire regime, and for reasons transcending the obvious that the War Party refuses to see. Peter Beck, director of the Korea office of the Asia Foundation, is quoted, after noting that the North Korean ruling clique admitted failure this time, and only because they had to, as saying

“They’re (the North Korean rulers) losing their grip on the flow of information in and out of the country. They decided it would be better to get out in front of it rather than having the failure spread through word of mouth.”

The free flow of information is far more fatal to any Communist regime, or any tin-horn dictatorship of whatever variety, than all the billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars the War Party wants us to ladle out to those who fund its members’ lifelong pursuits of self-aggrandizement. That the information about the failure of this latest missile launch attempt would inevitably reach the North Korean people proved far more damaging than the seemingly inevitable failure itself. If we were really serious about toppling the Kim dynasty, rather than financing the reelection campaigns of those in the War Party, we would work more on getting information into North Korea than on “keeping our guard up” through the frivolous expenditure of taxpayers’ money on a military approach to the problem.

About Me

Democrat? Republican? As a guy with no patience for liars, fools, or hypocrites, Mighty Quinn has a healthy disdain for pols of both parties.
A professional investor and lifelong observer of politics, Mark Quinn examines global politics primarily, but not exclusively, from a financial perspective. Mr. Quinn also writes extensively on the politics of Chicago, where he grew up surrounded by pros at the art and science of fleecing the taxpayers and enriching their pals. National pols can only gawk as they aspire to such heights of political chicanery.
In addition to Mighty Quinn on Politics and Money, Quinn also writes The Insightful Pontificator. Formerly the repository his political and financial posts, the Pontificator now features Mr. Quinn’s ruminations on faith and religion. Some have suggested it is written to atone for the often ferocious rants one finds on the Mighty Quinn site.
Mr. Quinn was a featured writer on the Rant Political and Rant Finance sites. He has also written two novels on Chicago politics, The Chairman and The Chairman’s Challenge. Both do for Chicago politics what The Godfather did for the New York Mob.